There is a huge problem that this article presents. However, I don't find it in the weakness or strength of the border police, but rather what is war, statelessness, and territorial claims in the Arab countries inciting their people to do. It is clear that the migration is not because of some whim or sudden desire to 'invade' the marvellous European countries. The concept of migration and the scepticism placed on the people should be refocused towards the global system- of oil wars, of the oil needs for mass production and of the mania for mass consumption.

This is the reason you will see a partial mobilisation of the Greek armed forces in the near future along the main routes used by migrant smugglers operating from Turkey, following the election of a centre-right Greek government.
This action will be taken, I predict, in direct consultation with European partners and neighbouring country, but excluding Turkey.
The political "capital" in taking such a decision will be immense for such a future government, as it will be eagerly supported by middle-class Greek voters and European partners.
As with other major issues, the Turkish establishment views the issue of illegal immigration as a preferential field to engage in grand bazaar-style bargaining: "hey, I'll stop Afghans and Bangladeshis trying to enter Europe, but you'll have to scrap Schengen visas for my citizens first".

Frontex is spending millions of taxpayers euro to provide holidays for EU border police. They have been 2 years at the greek-turkish landborder counting migrants producing statistics. How come they can not control this 12 km border of our land? They also demand from our police to detain the migrants in miserable conditions in order to count them.Stop the hipocrasy and go back and control other eu borders instead.

controling border means arresting traffickers of humans not dealing with the results of the smugglers criminal acts. somebody has to start working to stop this terrible phenomina. people smuggling has become the biggest criminal activity in modern history.

Indeed, detecting and exposing the trafficking networks is Frontex's highest priority in Evros. It's difficult because the traffickers themselves never come near the border any more. Frontex may not legally operate internally in the EU, so it falls to other EU law enforcement agencies and Interpol to detect and interrupt that side of the networks. In any case, enforcement alone simply can't do it - as noted by the expert in the article it is like water. Inviting Turkey to join the EU would obviously change Greece's migration situation drastically.

Of course they are poor. People with means do not resort to smuggling themselves in secret truck compartments. €4,000 is a large investment on which these folks will strive to generate a decent return. Lots of mouths wherever they come from bank on this return.

Investment? The return on it is coming from welfare payments in European countries. They should stay in their own country and get it in order or immigrate legally. That's what Europeans did a few hundred years ago and that's how they got to where they are.

Look, pal, most of these immigrants will not live on welfare. They'll have no documentation for a long, long while, and they'll work their butts off in order to get some money. Those who live on welfare in EU are EU citizens, granted, mostly of African or South Asian origin, but that is mostly o failing of the EU states to integrate its own citizens, who because of their colour of skin, religion, etc, were being discriminated. As far as the history of European emigration goes, West Europeans didn't wait in their countries for the Red Skins in America, Indians in India, blacks in Africa, etc, etc to invite them to their countries! W. Europeans set sail in their ships, invaded all those continents, plundered them, killed the native populations, deposed the local kings and thororughly exploited their lands.

The ones who immigrate illegally and get a legal status do live on welfare. That's the whole point of illegal immigration. They don't go there to be illegal forever. Even leftists agree with that.

I don't think immigrant unemployment has anything to do with discrimination. How did millions of Turks get to Germany? They were offered jobs there while they were not even in the country! Most studies show that the major barrier for immigrants is their reluctance to learn the language. Third generation Turks still can't speak proper German. That's Germany's fault too?

Colonization happened a long time ago but if you want to bring it up lets talk about it objectively. It's not like the colonized countries lived peacefully. All those nations took their land from someone else by force. They just happened to kill them all as opposed to the European colonizers so you don't hear about it today. Almost no nation lives in the borders where it lived 1000 years ago. And the local kings were no better than the colonizers. In Africa they actively participated in the slave trade selling their own people. And it was not pure exploitation either. India has 95% of it's rail network built by the British 70 years ago.

Maybe there is some discrimination in Europe but that's nothing compared to what goes on in the immigrants' home countries. Try to be a Christian, Jew, gay or woman in those countries. Discrimination and prejudice in non Western countries is ten times worse and this is the culture they are trying to bring and force upon Europe. We all saw the Mohammed cartoon riots.

There are many truths in what you say, but that just shows that nobody is perfect, be it an entity be it a country. That means that no one can throw the stone at anybody screaming'sinner'. it is true illegal immigration is a problem, both for the immigrants as for the locals; these are truths that only a biased, insincere person would deny. But my point is: do you believe that your government in your rich country would be able to deffend that country's borders for ever from illegal immigrants? do you think that they can protect it without exercing violence on the immigrants? As even you said, almost no nation lives today where it did 1000 years ago. Immigration is a human basic feature. Do you think some laws, mostly dating only a few decades, will stop people from immigrating, illegally or not? We all know that technology, science, knowledge made the world a better place back in 1930's, most W. Europeans were taking daily baths, many problems that plagued the world for century were solved, epidemies were eradicated, but then the Geramans, the most evolved scientifically, systematically, machinistically wiped out some millions of j
Jews, reminding us that some things are deeply rooted into our nature and no matter how many laws, science, etc, some things will remain inherent to our nature. Back to my point, as long as the world is divided into rich and poors, into free and not-free, into people who throw away food and people who go to sleep empty stomach, there will always be illegal immigration. So you should realise that it is superfluous on your part to ask vehemently to your government to 'stop those illegals', this would be an impossible task, unless your country would close its borders and surround them with hundreds of thousands of soldiers and a thick belt of mindfields surrounding your country. Instead of being a cliché guy like everybody else in your country, you should ask your government to try to give a hand at eradicating those problems three quarters of the world suffers, because we humans are build as we are build, and never, ever, isolation in your nice rich crib would protect you when the hungry multitudes are coming to you. Either you help them either you eliminate them, those 5 bilions of poors, now, with so much destructive technology, it would be simple to do it, and then live your undisturbed, uninvaded comfortable life.

"do you believe that your government in your rich country would be able to deffend that country's borders for ever from illegal immigrants?"

You can build a fence and deport people. No need to physically hurt anyone. Once they know they won't be able to stay they will stop trying. By the way, in Egypt border patrols shoot every Somali refugee they catch.

"but then the Geramans, the most evolved scientifically, systematically, machinistically wiped out some millions of Jews"

Most scientists there were Jewish in the first place and very small percentage made those achievements anyway. The average German in the 1930s was no more educated than the average person in a developing nation today. Probably even less with developing nations having Internet today.

"there will always be illegal immigration"
Not true. There is no illegal immigration in Japan. It's a question of policy. In the Western Europe the leftist governments encouraged to give citizenship to illegal immigrants because it bought them votes.

"Either you help them either you eliminate them"
No need to get that radical. Those nations should help themselves and build up their own countries just like the Europeans did. Nobody helped Europe. Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan were wastelands and yet their people didn't sneak into other countries to get handouts but changed the situation by hard work.

It is obvious you are a conservative, right wing person, or, as I find the US bipartidical system more relevant here (as the left-right division in Europe is too messy, the left in Europe stands for socialism and sometimes almost comunism whereas the right stands for anything from centre-left to extreme-right), whereas I am what you would call a libertarian: right wing concerning purely economic policies, like liberalisation, free trade, anti protectionism, but left wing, like a democrat, concerning morals, religion, social rights, etc. I am also a humanist, unlike you, who seem to be a stiff conceptualist, a hater of the left (you seem to accuse the left in Europe of all evils). Do you really think that you can throw in an Afghani or an Iraqui's face all those stoicist, philosophical concept of yours, concerning how peoples should stay home, everybody should migrate only when they are asked to, they should try and develop their country, etc? Man, they do not feel up to the task, maybe, to fix problems in their countries, to fix wars they didn't produce, to fix politics and economy in their country, ehere, even if they had the knowledge, they couldn't do it because they are not allowed to by the structures in power there. Yes, you'll say, that is notr your problem, they should manage , fight and die if necessary, they should keep adding up to the altar of sacrifice, and you, lucky you, who were born in a rich, stable place, and are entitled to all the rights just by your birth, like the aristocrats of the past, who inherited everythink by birth, merit didn't matter. I'm not saying rich world should open the gates for everybody to get in, of course, but at least rich countries should show humanity, should try to help thirld world and not just stand indifferently waiting for those unfortunates to become Koreeans and taiwanese, and hopefully they won't, at the rate things are going and the little we invest in finding ecological energy and the indifference we show towards developing an ecologist mentality, well, if the entire human population would have levels of life the way the Americans, for instance,have and understant to keep having, then, our planet would be finished in months!

I don't think illegal immigration is compatible with libertarianism. You can adopt as many third world children as you like but forcing the rest of the working population to make life better for some stranger is more of a socialist agenda.
Of course they produced the wars. 99% of Afghans don't believe in any rights for women and 70-80% percent of Palestinians support suicide bombers. When Europeans were thinking this way they lived under the same miserable conditions. The illegal immigrants will live like Europeans when they start to think and work like Europeans. Until then they can stay in their own countries where their ignorant views are accepted.